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"It's like we say in St. Olaf, Christmas without fruitcake is like St. Sigmund's Day without the headless boy." This article is incomplete. You can help the Golden Girls Wiki by expanding it. |
Mother's Day is the twenty-fifth episode of the third season of The Golden Girls and the seventy-sixth episode overall. Directed by Terry Hughes and written by Terry Grossman and Kathy Speer, it premiered on NBC-TV on May 7th, 1988. It is the Season 3 finale.
Plot[]
The girls are all dressed to go out for brunch on Mother's Day, but are also waiting for their children's expected phone calls before they leave. Sophia first receives a call from Phil, who Sophia expected would call to try to scam her for money as an indirect way to ask her for money. This makes Dorothy remember about the Mother's Day when she and Stan had to ask his mother for money since his business wasn’t doing well.
Mother Zbornak[]
Dorothy and Stan arrive at Mother Zbornak's trailer home, which is filled with photos of Stan on the walls. Stan's mother greets Stan warmly and dotes on him immediately, while giving Dorothy the cold shoulder. As she goes to prepare tea for Stan, Stan pleads for Dorothy to be nice to his mother and urges Dorothy to ask for money instead of himself, explaining that he would break her heart if he was the one asking and ruining his image of being a successful salesman. Stan excuses himself as his mother returns, saying he needed to make a phone call and leaves the two women alone with each other.
Dorothy quickly finds out that Stan's mother is smarter than she appears, as she immediately deduces that they were here to ask her for money. She explains that she always knew Stan was a yutz that would never amount to anything, but is grateful he married someone loving but tough like Dorothy. When Dorothy then asks why she was always so mean to her, Stan's mother explains that if Stan thinks the two of them get along, he would continue to be dependent on his own mother. She then provides Dorothy with twice the amount of money they were asking for, and asks her to hide the fact she’s supporting them from Stan.
As Stan returns, they continue to pretend to not get along, and Dorothy tells him their attempt to borrow money was a failure. As soon as Dorothy and Stan head out the door, Stan's mother immediately takes down all her photos of Stan, revealing it as a facade to stoke Stan's ego every time he visits.
Big Mommy[]
Back in the present, Sophia is losing her patience to go to brunch. Rose's son Charlie Jr. then calls, and Blanche begins to recall a story of a time she visited her own mother on Mother's Day while Rose speaks with her son.
Blanche makes a visit to Virginia to see her mother, Elizabeth, at her nursing home on Mother's Day. Despite her mother's ailing mental health, Blanche reminisces and regales her mother about the wild adventures she had in her youth. Just as it seems to Blanche that her stories were not getting through to Elizabeth's spotty memory, her mother corrects her about very specific details about her stories. Elizabeth assures Blanche that despite having her memories come and go, she will never forget every stunt Blanche ever pulled. She then seemingly misremembers her own age, stating to be 85 instead of 89 as corrected by Blanche, but reveals she purposefully did not tell her real age as a "true lady," something Blanche often does herself.
Last Bus to St. Olaf[]
As Blanche finishes her story, Sophia grows even more impatient. Asking the group if they can finally go to brunch, they refuse, with Dorothy remarking that her son Michael has not called yet. Blanche tells Sophia that it means a lot to a mother to speak with their children on Mother's Day, which reminds Rose of a time she spoke with another mother on their way home in Minnesota on Mother's Day.
On her way back to St. Olaf for Mother's Day, Rose waits at a bus station for a connecting ride that is set to arrive in an hour. While there, she meets Anna, who is on her way to visit her own daughter, and the two connect due to growing up in neighboring towns. Despite Rose's long-winded stories, Anna is appreciative of Rose's company. As their respective bus rides seem to take longer than expected to arrive, Rose worries she should call her children to update them about her status, and urges Anna to do the same to the daughter she is going home to see. Anna then reveals to Rose that her daughter has long since passed, but she still makes the trip home to where she is buried to spend time with her, as Mother's Day was special to both of them. She worries, however, that this may be the last time she can make the trip, since she left her nursing home without permission. A local police officer shows up soon after and approaches Anna, suspecting she is the runaway. At the same time, their bus is announced to have arrived. Rose, thinking quick, tells the police officer he has the wrong person, and pretends Anna is her mother and that they are traveling together. She then escorts a thankful Anna off with her, leaving the police officer baffled.
Picture It: Brooklyn, 1957...[]
Back in the present again, Dorothy's son Michael finally calls, leaving Sophia aghast that she will never go to brunch. She then begins to recount her own Mother's Day story.
In 1957, a middle-aged Sophia is expecting her own mother, Eleanor, to visit on Mother's Day, much to Sophia's husband Sal's dismay. Sophia wants them to get along, as she wants to ask the aging Eleanor to move in with them. Eleanor then arrives with a younger Dorothy, but Eleanor is irate at the thought of coming to Sal's home because she suspects he hates her. Sophia counters that it can’t be true, as they both want her to move in with them. Sal then confronts Eleanor about his sincerity, and the two come to an agreement despite Eleanor's reluctance to show affection.
When Sophia finishes her story, Dorothy asks Sophia is she wants to speak with her grandson. Sophia then hangs up on Michael after a brief word, stating she can’t wait any longer to leave. As the girls move to leave the house, Blanche's daughter Janet calls. This prompts Sophia to start bringing pots and pans to the stove, stating she doesn’t want to "starve to death."[1]
Tall Tales[]
Tales from the Old South[]
Blanche recounts the day in 1949 when she attempted to run off with Deck Bovenlough, a twice-divorced out-of-work man in his forties. While Deck was particularly appealing to the inexperienced Blanche, her real reason for dating Deck was because his oldest daughter was her cheerleading rival, and if she married Deck, she would be her rival's mother and be able to pull her off the squad. After a month of dating, Deck proposed to Blanche, and on Mother's Day, the couple met at the Rexall drugstore and drove off to a chapel that specialized in "marrying off stupid teenage girls from well-to-do families". Unknown to the couple, Old Man Montgomery had overheard them and tipped off Blanche's parents, who were able to get to the chapel first. Upon arriving at Bubba's Chapel of Bliss and Tackle Shop, Blanche found her parents waiting for her. Surprisingly, Blanche's mother gave Blanche and Deck her blessing -- knowing that once Deck had her mother's approval, Blanche would lose interest in him. Blanche gave Deck his ID bracelet back and went home with her parents, and when she asked her mother if she was mad at her, her mother replied that it was the best Mother's Day she'd ever had.
Elizabeth then corrects Blanche as to what day it was, saying that it happened on Christmas Day rather than Mother's Day.
Back in St. Olaf...[]
To be added.
Picture It...[]
This particular Picture It is not told by Sophia, but rather by her mother.
Cast[]
Main Cast[]
- Bea Arthur as Dorothy Zbornak, Eleanor Grisanti
- Rue McClanahan as Blanche Devereaux
- Betty White as Rose Nylund
- Estelle Getty as Sophia Petrillo
Guest List[]
- Herb Edelman as Stanley Zbornak
- Alice Ghostley as Mother Zbornak
- Wesley Mann as Jacob
- Geraldine Fitzgerald as Anna Egerman
- Terrence Evans as Sheriff
- Helen Kleeb as Elizabeth Ann Hollingsworth
- Lynnie Greene as Young Dorothy
- Sid Melton as Salvadore Petrillo
Notes[]
- This is the third time someone other than Sophia says "Picture it..." before telling a story.
Production[]
- Geraldine Fitzgerald, who plays Anna Egerman, the bereaved mother Rose meets at the bus station and protects from the sheriff in "Mother's Day", later plays a friend of Sophia's who wants to commit suicide in "Not Another Monday".[2]
- Lynnie Green said in interviews that she was overjoyed to play a young Dorothy as she was a huge fan of Bea Arthur's, and watched episodes of the show to mimic some of Arthur's mannerisms. Nevertheless, according to Green, the filming of her scene did not go over smoothly. Green said Arthur was not happy to be made up to play Dorothy's old grandmother. To compound problems both Estelle Getty, who was famously known for her stage fright which hampered her ability to memorize lines, and Sid Melton kept flubbing their lines causing many retakes. Each time they messed up a line Arthur would get more annoyed saying loudly "It's not gonna get any better." Green said, however, that the audience found the many retakes, and Arthur's increased annoyance, hysterical which eased the tension. Luckily for Green, the one bright spot was Arthur was impressed by her portrayal of a younger Dorothy and thus Green ended up having a recurring role on the show for flashback episodes that showed a younger Dorothy.
- In the flashback of Sophia's apartment in Brooklyn, one of the pictures on her wall is the same one used as the wedding portrait of Blanche's parents in "Wham, Bam, Thank You Mammy".
Continuity[]
- Although it is widely believed that Blanche's exact age was never revealed, this episode reveals in a flashback that Blanche was seventeen in 1949. That would make her fifty-three years old when the series began in 1985 and sixty when it ended in 1992.
- This episode reveals that Rose also has a son, Charlie Jr. As the girls are waiting for their respective children to call, Rose gets hers from him.
Goofs[]
- Sophia's mother being played by Bea Arthur dismisses the plot of "Foreign Exchange".
- Bea Arthur playing Sophia's mother confused some viewers as she spoke with her native Brooklyn accent, when logically she should’ve had an Italian accent, as she was born and raised in Sicily. This episode also suggests she was still alive in the 1950's when in "My Brother, My Father", Sophia said her mother died in Sicily when Sophia was in her 20's.
- Dorothy's son Michael is twenty-two years old in season three. When Sophia and Dorothy reminisce Brooklyn, NY, 1954, Dorothy asks Sophia to babysit her children, one of whom is Michael. Sophia refuses, so Dorothy says "I'll just leave them with Stan's mother." They talk about Michael screaming when Stan's mother was watching over them. If Michael was a baby in the fifties, he should be in his thirties in season three.
[]
References[]
- ↑ The Golden Girls, Season 3, Episode 25, "Mother's Day". Speer, Kathy and Grossman, Terry (writers) & Hughes, Terry (director) (May 7th, 1988)
- ↑ The Golden Girls, Season 5, Episode 7, “Not Another Monday”. Parent, Gail (writer) & Hughes, Terry (director) (November 11th, 1989)